Saturday, May 12, 2012

Bus From Baghdad

That is the title of an open-air photo exhibition that I saw lately in Copenhagen.


The Danish photographer, Henrik Saxgren, has photographed and portrayed 30 busdrivers, who are all foreigners, that all have come to Denmark to pursue a dream of a good life. Their stories are different and tales of a hard life - but all of them have a thing in common: they are all proud of their jobs as busdrivers as they have a job and can contribute to the country which is now their home.

Now there is room for thought: you often take your bus drivers for granted and never give any second thoughts to why they are in Denmark: what brought them here? When I grew up in the country side, we were all on first name basis with the busdrivers - here in the city it simply does not happen. Quite sad actually, as I have fond memories of some of the busdrivers from back then, as they have this ability to cheer everybody up while driving the bus just by them being there - lots of bad days were turned into good days during those bus rides.

Later this year, a book is published with their stories and I hope that a lot of schools will put this on the students' reading list and learn about integration of foreigners into our country. In English class at school, I remembered that we read a book called "The Melting Pot" which contained small stories, excerpts from letters, photos, statistics etc. about the people who came to the US in pursuit of getting a new chance (have later on tried to find a copy of that book without luck). I am glad that we had to read that, as it has giving me a some insight to the country that I like to visit on vacations - and the must-do of visiting the Tennaments and Ellis Island in New York and Angel Island in California.

1 comment:

Vicky said...

Busdrivers: when i first started school, only about 4yrs old, I had to get the bus home, from the school side, there was someone to put us on the bus and when I arrived at my destination someone would be there to collect me but on the odd times there was nobody there, the bus driver would leave the bus and walk me to my gate, now it was only round the corne. The poor man died some years back but I still remember him.
They are good people.